Brave New Year 2020
by Teacup Poney
Summary: In which the Doctor meets someone more broken than he is (and, against all odds, celebrates New Year's Eve).


Notes : Originally written in French, but I figured no one reads French Doctor Who fanfiction, so here you go.

(There was one reference I had a hard time translating: just bear in mind that there's an eyewear brand named Krys, it will all make sense later.)

(Also, I've been rewatching the first four seasons and I realised I got the timeline mixed up; well, Time Lords have complex lives, things don't always happen to them in the right order.)

Trigger warning : mentions of suicide, depression, anxiety, mental health issues, all the fun stuff. It is supposed to be heartwarming though.

* * *

"What is it _now_?"

The Doctor was tired.

His hectic life was usually enough to hide his weariness, but a simple piece of clothing had ruined his best efforts: while rummaging through his archive boxes, looking for a broken vortex manipulator to tinker with, he had stumbled upon an old hoodie.

Rose's hoodie.

As his two hearts simultaneously missed a beat, he could not help imagining how happy she had to be now, with this other Doctor who was entirely him, and yet, cruelly not.

Once his thoughts had taken this path, he had not been able to stop them—it would have been like trying to stop midway through a water slide. Amidst a whirlwind of regrets and guilt, familiar faces forced themselves upon his mind; poor Jack he had to abandon back on Satellite 5; Martha Jones (she was so right to go, he realised with a wistful smile); the penultimate Time Lord who died in his arms, leaving him alone in the Universe; and Donna.

What he would have given to forget what he had been forced to do to her.

All at once, the exhaustion of his nine hundred-odd years crushed him. Sometimes, he thought he had lived far too long; maybe he should quietly bide his time, without meddling. When the moment came, no one could force him to regenerate, after all.

And that was the moment the T.A.R.D.I.S. chose to emit a warning signal, breaking his dark train of thought.

_Now is really not a good time._

The Doctor finally tore his gaze from the jumble of odd objects scattered across the floor: so far, he had always trusted his ship to take him where he needed to be. He leapt to his feet and studied the console screen: apparently, the T.A.R.D.I.S. was adamant that he had to land on a very precise location in the suburbs of Paris, where all signals went wild. Something terrible was about to happen, and he could prevent it.

Well, so much for quietly biding his time. Swiftly, he typed in the coordinates and pulled down a lever. The console room shook tremendously, he grabbed onto the panels for balance, and a few seconds later, the ship noisily came to a stop. Before he got out, he glanced at the date: the 31st of December, 2019. Oh, aliens _did _love to plan their invasions during the holiday season.

For good measure, he pulled a little party noisemaker from a drawer, then he opened the police box door. Its creaking sounded strangely ominous to him.

The blue box had materialised inside a cramped bathroom. The Doctor gave her a little pat to acknowledge this unusual sense of precision. He drew his sonic screwdriver from an inside pocket and scanned the room: no sign of extra-terrestrial life. The sink was full of different sized makeup brushes, a bottle of aspirin, eyeshadows and mascara. A pleasant almond scent filled the room, and he heard a bath running behind him. In all likelihood, a messy female human, perhaps with a headache, was merely getting ready for a New Year's Eve party; he began to wonder whether the T.A.R.D.I.S. had landed in the right place.

And yet, he could not shake this gloomy feeling that had taken hold of him since he had opened the door. A deep sorrow was oozing from this room, he could taste it in the atmosphere.

In the mirror which was slowly fogging up, a metallic reflection suddenly caught his attention. He turned around and his gaze fell upon a tidy row of razor blades on the edge of the bathtub.

And he understood.

For a split second, he froze. _No, no, no, stupid humans. _

He snapped out of it and turned off the hot water tap, grabbed the blades and hastily threw them in the toilet, as if they were burning his hands. On reflection, he emptied the aspirin bottle too and flushed, a trivial gesture which felt surprisingly dramatic.

"Get out."

The Doctor spun around. A young woman was standing at the threshold, waving a hairbrush at him. Behind their intricate smoky makeup, her eyes looked fiercely determined and yet her lips quivered imperceptibly. She was wearing a T-shirt which depicted some kind of yellow humanoid sponge, a black ballet skirt, and her hair, pulled back up into a messy bun, was _purple_.

"Nice makeup," he tried. "Having a night out?"

She did not answer. Her eyes darted to the bathtub, then she noticed the T.A.R.D.I.S.; she dropped the brush, which clattered to the floor tiles.

"You're the Doctor."

Well, that was unexpected.

"How do you know?" he asked, intrigued.

"Too much time to spend on the Internet, apparently."

She was aiming at a light tone, obviously choosing not to address the elephant in the room, but her legs gave out as she spoke and she slid onto the edge of the bathtub. The Doctor rushed towards her and quickly scanned her with his sonic screwdriver.

"No, I'm okay."

As a matter of fact, the device confirmed that her vital signs were normal, except for a moderate hypoglycaemia.

"I saw stars for a bit, that's all. Now look, Doctor, any other day I would've loved to see you showing up in my bathroom, but—"

"You're busy."

"Yes, sorry," —she shrugged apologetically— "don't take it personally".

He studied her for a moment. She looked nothing like a person who intended to end her life two minutes earlier, which made this all the more so chilling. He caught sight of the inscription adorning her T-shirt: the aforementioned sponge was holding a rainbow between its little yellow hands and declaring 'Best Day Ever' in a deeply ecstatic way.

She seemed to notice his interest:

"I reckoned it'd make the paramedics laugh," she said with a kind of lopsided smile.

"Really?"

She lowered her head, unable to hold his heavy gaze any longer.

"You're right, it's not funny."

"No, it's not," he gulped.

He shifted his weight, considering his options. He definitely could not leave her on her own. Taking her across the Universe to take her mind off things seemed inappropriate, even insulting. He could not take her to the emergency service either, since she was physically unharmed—it was a close call. Maybe she had some friends or family he could reach? No, given the circumstances, she probably did not feel like seeing anyone. There was only one solution left to him.

"Do you have plans for New Year's Eve?" he asked as he pulled the noisemaker from his coat.

She rolled her eyes slightly.

"All right, that settles it then—you're stuck with me."

"Do I have a say in the matter?"

He just shook his head and held out a hand to help her to her feet. She took it begrudgingly. As she stood up, she swayed a little and held onto him to steady herself.

"Are you sure you didn't take anything?" he asked, gravely this time. "You're not dying on me, pinkie swear?"

"No, it's just… Well, I haven't eaten for a week."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I wanted to look acceptable enough when they found me," she went on quietly, embarrassed.

Ah, that explained the dramatic makeup then. He opened his mouth to answer and, unable to find anything to say, closed it with a goldfish-like noise. He decided to change the subject.

"What's your name?"

"Alice."

"Okay, Alice, just wait outside for me and don't lose this," he said, leaving her with the party blowout.

He gently steered her out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her, then he met his own reflection in the mirror, just in time to see his joyful demeanour crumble; his eyes stared back at him, distraught and weary. He had lost too many people. _Please let her not be the next one_. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.

When he opened them again, he had already regained his composure; with purpose, he ran into the T.A.R.D.I.S. to get two very specific items. He shortly came out, arms loaded, nearly opened the bathroom door and reconsidered: the half-full bathtub strongly disturbed him.

_Now that's better_, he thought as he pulled the plug.

He left the bathroom with a smile as big as the moon, carrying a kind of portable barbecue in one hand and a gigantic bag of marshmallows in the other.

It was almost night already. The living room was scarcely larger than the bathroom; it was overflowing with trinkets and ornaments he would have loved to further examine, had he not been otherwise preoccupied.

Alice was sitting on the edge of a bright yellow sofa, knees curled up against her chest, staring off into the distance. She looked utterly lost. And quite right too, she had not planned to be there tonight, he realised as he stifled a shiver.

"What's this?" she asked suspiciously when she saw him arrive.

"Portable bonfire! The finest invention of the twenty-second century," he declared, just a bit too cheerful. "We're going to roast marshmallows right here, in your living room."

What had previously seemed like a perfectly comforting and appropriate idea suddenly sounded so very weak to his own ears.

"I don't eat marshmallows that much," she answered, evidently sorry for him.

"Ah, but these are from Regalon, Venus. Zero calories; second best invention of the twenty-second century."

(That was of course a bare-faced lie, but the poor thing needed sugar in her body.)

"If you say so," she sighed. "And what did you bring us to drink?"

He bit his lips: he had forgotten about drinks. Alice shook her head in mock hurt and disappeared under the counter delimiting the kitchen. He heard some swearing; a few moments later, she emerged with two beer bottles. He arched an eyebrow.

"La Choulette, finest invention of the nineteenth century."

"Fantastic," agreed the Doctor.

He produced his screwdriver which emitted an uncapping frequency, then he pointed it at the campfire, setting it ablaze on the carpet, facing the sofa, just as though they had spent hours arranging kindling and logs for a perfect fire.

"Uhm, are you sure we're not going to burn to death? That'd be kind of counterproductive after your intervention."

"Brilliant design, don't worry," he reassured her as he tapped his bottle against hers.

He decided against proposing a toast. _To this whole you-not-being-dead thing? To a better year than 2019? _No, really, nothing could be right.

Wordlessly, he offered her a skewer and they sat down on the carpet, side by side, leaning back against the sofa. Soon, a roasted marshmallow fragrance filled the room. If he put aside the fact that he had just narrowly prevented a suicide, the situation was somehow comfortably domestic.

"Hey," she asked timidly after a moment's silence, "this might sound weird to you, but weren't you supposed to have close-cropped hair, a leather jacket, big ears that stick out…? Here, look."

She quickly swiped her fingers across the screen of her phone and displayed a picture to emphasize her words.

"Yeah, I used to, but that was then," he said as he drew his spectacles out of his pocket to have a closer look.

She sniggered quietly.

"What did I say?"

"No, forget it, it's dumb."

He managed not to look offended and turned his attention back to the screen; it was a blurry photograph, definitely clandestine, but it really was him, indeed. His lips curved into a nostalgic smile. There had been some good moments to this ninth version of himself. Admittedly, the current tenth incarnation did have great hair (to be perfectly honest, he absolutely _loved_ his hair), but it was harder to live too; all this enthusiasm was exhausting to maintain after what he had been through. His thoughts were interrupted by Alice's voice:

"I found it on the Internet too. So, you transform into a new person when you're supposed to die, is that right?"

He was not even surprised anymore.

"More or less, yeah."

"You must be very old," she pointed out, slightly squinting at him with her black eyes (for a split second, he felt as if he had met those eyes before, although he could not possibly have).

"Quite right."

"And you _can't_ die?"

"Not really."

"How tired you must be," she whispered compassionately.

He held her gaze but did not answer. He was not sure this particular truth needed to be voiced; moreover, they were not supposed to talk about _him_.

"My turn now," he ventured. She dropped her gaze but he went on, "Why?"

The question noticeably sucked all the oxygen out of the room. He had gone too far.

As he was about to apologize, she finally spoke, unexpectedly, as if to the last marshmallow on her skewer: "I… That's the thing, I don't know."

He held his breath as he waited for her to continue.

"It's not that I _don't_ _want_ to tell you why everything's so hard, that'd be the least I can do actually, since I bothered you and—"

"You didn't bother me, I broke into your flat, remember?"

She met his eyes, attempting a brave smile in spite of her increasingly quivering lips.

"Anyway"—she hesitated briefly before putting the lonesome marshmallow back on the bag— "I really wish I could tell you why. I'm sorry."

There _was_ a way, the Doctor realised. If sharing her pain could relieve her in some way, then…

"May I?" he asked, his hands carefully reaching for her face.

"Star Trek style?"

He smiled and nodded.

She indicated her tacit agreement by closing her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Then, softly, he pressed his fingers to her temples and closed his eyes in turn.

The violence of her pain made him reel.

Nothing could have prepared him for this; it was something akin to the grief and regret that overwhelmed him earlier in the T.A.R.D.I.S., but so much denser, since she was not nine hundred years old. There was anger too, a burning rage exclusively directed at herself—how could it be possible to hate oneself so much? And then there was the emptiness. Nothing to do with the void, no; it was an existential nothingness, an oppressive awareness that life had no meaning whatsoever. He wondered how long anyone could survive such a crushing_ emptiness_. And yet, amongst this maelstrom of anguish and suffering, here and there emerged a few rare moments of grace, of absolute bliss. It was all the more cruel: the pain always returned with a vengeance. There was no way out. Except—

Only when he opened his eyes did he realise he had broken the connexion. She fluttered her eyes open as well, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Come here," he said as he instinctively pulled her close to him.

"I don't do hugs," she protested.

"You'll survive this one," he countered gently, wrapping his lanky arms around her little figure.

In the end, she hugged him back and burst into tears on his pinstriped jacket.

After a few minutes, her sobs died away and gave way to muffled apologies.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"I really am."

"Hush now."

Suddenly, the Doctor noticed a small harp sitting in a corner of the living room.

"Do you play?" he could not help asking.

She turned her head to see what he was talking about and took advantage of the opportunity to squirm out of his embrace.

"I haven't for a while now," she responded, blowing her nose and throwing the handkerchief into the fire.

Indeed, a number of strings were broken, he realised on closer inspection.

"That's too bad, I do love the harp."

And just then, he understood why this suicidal young human felt so familiar, even though he had never met her. It was so obvious. How could he have missed it?

A smile, the first true smile of the day, spread across the Doctor's face.

"What?"

He shook his head quietly, still smiling.

"What is it, Doctor?"

"Eat your marshmallow and put on your shoes, I'm going to show you something."

He slipped out to park the T.A.R.D.I.S. in the living room (he was not too keen on making her go back to the bathroom if he could avoid it). The blue door squeaked open and he found Alice in the same place he had left her, tying the laces of glitter Converse shoes.

"Excellent choice," he commented, wiggling his own red Converse.

She took a tentative step towards the blue box.

"Is it really bigger on the inside?" she asked, a mixture of hope and disbelief in her voice.

"See for yourself." He indicated the door with a flourish; she did not need to be asked twice.

Moments later, they landed right in the middle of a pavement in Paris, just in front of a department store.

"You're taking me shopping?"

She sounded disappointed.

"Follow me. Oh, look, an escalator!"

He did like escalators.

"Right, I usually wouldn't be allowed to do that"—he went on, paying no attention to her questioning look—"but technically, I'm not making you cross your own timeline, I'm just taking you to the Media Store, so I think it should be okay. Yeah, it should… Well, most definitely should. Well, keep a low profile, just in case," he added with a wink.

He hurried towards the back of the store, his pace so brisk that she virtually had to jog to keep up with him. At last, they reached the music section he was looking for. Just catching up with him, she opened her mouth in a valiant attempt to protest, but he waved an album in her face, nearly knocking her out:

"Here you go!"

"What do you mean?"

"Take a look!"

He feverishly watched the emotion spread across the young woman's face as she examined the cover.

"No way."

"Yes way."

"I released an _album_?"

He could barely refrain from bouncing up and down with enthusiasm.

"You even made a few. You're excellent, I just _knew_ it rang a bell somewhere and—"

"I made an album."

"Yeap. And look how pretty you are."

Overexcited, he grabbed the disk out of her hands and turned it around; on the other side, a stylish portrait of Alice appeared next to the track list. She looked a few years older and her hair was now turquoise, but it was undeniably her.

"That's me."

"Yes"—he confirmed once again, playfully— "That's you. Your hair doesn't seem to be getting any better, though."

She did not even pick up on his jest; she was gazing at the album, completely still except for her eyes scrutinising every single pixel on the cover.

"Can I listen to it?" she asked after a while.

"Yeah, _right_. I'm taking enough risks as it is. Come on, let's go."

He put the album back on the shelf and took her by the hand.

Back in the living room, she remained oddly quiet for a minute.

"Are you all right?"

"I think I am," she uttered slowly.

Her gaze, looking into the distance, finally came back into focus as their eyes met; her face lit up and she went to fetch two more beers.

"I'm feeling more like celebrating now," she explained. "Do your thing with the screwdriver again."

A few Choulettes later, they were laughing their heads off by the fire. The full week of fasting most certainly helping, she was adorably inebriated; as for him, he merely was in an extremely good mood (superior Time Lord biology). Halfway through a joke about a Sontaran who met a Judoon in a bar, he stopped, mid-sentence: he had just spotted a figurine on a shelf, which represented the same yellow sponge as the one on her T-shirt. Or maybe it was a piece of cheese?

"So, tell me, this sponge…" he started as he got to his feet to grab the statuette.

"Bob!" she exclaimed affectionately.

"No, I'm the Doctor, remember?"

"No—_Sponge_Bob!"

Once again, he quirked an eyebrow.

"You really don't know SpongeBob, do you?"

As he shook his head in confusion, she let out a chuckle and jumped to her feet—for a second, he dreaded seeing her fall into the artificial fire, but she could hold her drink remarkably well, all things considered. She nudged him and set to rummaging through a drawer under the television.

"And here you go," she exclaimed as she tossed him a DVD.

He caught it mid-air and noted that it depicted, yet again, the same human-looking over-excited sponge. 'SpongeBob, season 2', read the jacket.

Alice turned on the television which started bellowing a slogan for low-priced windscreen repairs.

"Sorry, I need to find the remote. Sorry, sorry."

He was about to turn down the volume with his sonic, when a young man named Krys appeared on the screen to praise the benefits of his new glasses. "I used to have ears that stuck out," he said, "but that was_ then_."

"Oh!" exclaimed the Doctor.

She lifted her head in surprise, suspending her frantic search.

(As it turned out, Krys was the eyewear brand's name.)

"I just understood something, that's all," he brushed off, beaming.

"Okay, SpongeBob-time," she finally announced.

They settled into the sofa with the freshly recovered remote control, along with their beers and marshmallows. The opening credits started; with her mouth full of marshmallow, she sang along absent-mindedly, which made them both giggle. Two episodes later, the Doctor was sure of one thing: this little sponge was brilliant.

Halfway through the DVD, he felt her head drop onto his shoulder: she was sleeping already. He grasped a plaid on the armrest and covered her with it, careful not to wake her.

"Doctor?" she asked in a drowsy voice.

Well, that was a fail.

"Yes?"

"In the near future, is there going to be a treatment, or something—you know, for people like me?"

He closed his eyes as he recalled all the unsuccessful attempts at manipulating the human brain (which had mostly required his in-extremis intervention). He wished his answer could be different.

"I'm so sorry, no."

She let out a little sigh.

"I suspected as much."

"But you're going to hang in there, eh?" he said, putting his arm around her.

"You've really got a thing about hugging."

"Right. Sorry."

He did not move his arm nonetheless; he was loath to relinquish his only way of comforting her. Resignedly, she nestled her head against him and she softly answered his question:

"I'm going to try."

"Fine by me."

He turned down SpongeBob ever so slightly and watched her from the corner of his eye as she fell asleep. He had no idea what he was going to do with her. Take her with him in the T.A.R.D.I.S.? Or trust her, let her go back to music and keep an eye on her, from afar? Visit her regularly and pray that he was not too late next time? He would make a decision in the morning. For now, all he could give her was a shoulder to sleep on.

Outside, he heard whistles and shouts. He glanced at the clock on the television: midnight.

"Happy New Year, Alice."


End file.
